


Call My Name And I'll Come Running

by sapphire2309



Category: White Collar
Genre: Fire, Gen, Offscreen character death, reference to alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-15 09:47:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2224491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphire2309/pseuds/sapphire2309
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal is going back to a place he’d avoided for quite a long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call My Name And I'll Come Running

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hybridshade (shimyaku)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shimyaku/gifts).



> This is not my best work. You have been warned.  
> Set post-anklet.  
> Title's from Help by Hurts.  
> For hybridshade's prompt 'after all these years' over at run_the_con (lj).

The evening after his anklet was taken off for the final time was quieter than Neal thought it’d be.

It was a really good restaurant, sure, but Peter, Elizabeth, Diana and Jones were the only other people with him. The Harvard Crew had been invited but bowed out graciously.

That may or may not have had something to do with the stinking day old egg sandwich he found in his hat.

Before he knew it, there was champagne in everyone’s glasses and toasts were being made in his name and everyone started hunting down desserts.

“Do you know where you’re going yet?” Peter asked, for about the twentieth time today.

Neal sighed and looked up. “Honestly? I have absolutely no idea.”

Peter nodded slowly. He clearly didn’t believe Neal.

Neal looked back down at his menu. The desserts looked fairly standard: crème brûlée, tiramisu, ice cream, pound cake (originally, equal measures of flour, sugar, egg and butter)...

 _Gooey butter cake._

He wasn’t sure where that popped into his head from. But now he knew where he’s going. Or, at least, where his heart wanted him to go.

“What are you planning to steal?”

Neal looked up, eyebrows raised.

“You’ve got a pretty huge grin on your face, the kind that usually says that you’ve just figured out how to con someone out of something. What are you planning to steal?”

“Not steal, Peter. Recover. I’m planning to recover something.”

“What?”

He nearly said it out loud, _“I’m going to recover some memories.”_ But it’s too cheesy. He shook his head instead.

Peter sighed.

-:-

  
Neal looked down at his bus ticket. It was a piece of paper with letters on it. It shouldn’t be conflicting him this much or this badly.

It was the exact opposite of the route he’d taken to New York when he was eighteen.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to go. But he was sure he didn’t want to stay, at least in the short term.

A bus rumbled in. Neal would wager his ticket that it was the one to St. Louis. Fate had a way of making dramatic moments even more so.

He looked at the ticket, then at the city. If he boarded the bus, he’d be going back to a place he’d avoided for quite a long time. Physically and mentally.

He boarded the bus and wished it’d leave already so he didn’t have the option of getting down again.

-:-

  
Time had been good to Irene’s Bakery.

It could have been nasty, forcing the bakery into closing down through financial pressure and stiff competition from industrial giants like Walmart, but the bakery had been allowed to survive. Neal couldn’t be more thankful.

It hadn’t lost its country charm, Irene would have made sure of that. The red brick walls crumbled a little, the chairs outside were a little creaky, but the food was good, the pastries excellent and Irene herself did an excellent job of scaring away the bad sort of crowd.

Neal walked in slowly. Every step, every sight had an old memory attached to it. The chairs and tables and counters, though they had long since been upgraded to newer models, were positioned exactly as they had been.

 _Shoes squeaking reluctantly as they skidded to a halt right in front of the till, money clutched in two sweaty hands like it was a slippery newt, a soft but confident voice calling out, “One slice of gooey butter cake, please, Irene.”_

“You going to order?”

Neal looked up. Irene (not the young, joyful Irene he was familiar with, but an older, more crabby Irene) was glaring at him. He was confused at the hostility till he looked down. Apparently, he’d been leaning his elbows on the counter. Irene hated that with a passion.

“A slice of gooey butter cake please, i- if you don’t mind.” He skipped adding her name at the last minute.

“All right.” She seemed to have softened at the very mention of the local confection.

“Do you have a batch straight out of the oven?” Those tasted best, he remembered.

Irene scrubbed the counter fiercely. “Lucky for you, one came out not two minutes ago. Hold on while I cut it.”

“Boy knows his cake,” called a gruff voice from somewhere in the back.

“He sure does.”

Neal sat down at the table closest to the till. Habit, maybe, it used to be his usual haunt, or maybe just a polite gesture to Irene, so that she wouldn’t have far to walk.

Neal picked his cake apart with his fingertips, making sure to leave none on the table. He picked up one crumb with his thumb and stuck it into his mouth.

Irene stopped and squinted at him suspiciously. “There is only one child I know who eats his cake like that. Danny Brooks?”

“Yes, Irene?” Neal’s eyes flashed with joy, the edges of his lips dying to burst into a grin.

Irene sat down opposite him, “After all these _years_ , darling boy! Where have you been?”

“Oh, here and there.” Neal smiled mysteriously.

“All right, keep your secrets. You could’ve come back anytime. Why now?”

“Lots of reasons. Many of them related to this bakery.”

Irene flicked her dusting cloth in his direction. “Don’t you try to flatter me, darling. I’m immune to your charms - been exposed to them for far too long.”

“Okay, Irene.” He went back to his cake, eating it crumb by crumb, as though that might reduce the total calories.

“I’ve seen you do that before, Danny, it’s going to take an hour and a half.”

“I’ve got time.” He pulled his legs up to sit cross legged on the chair and flexed his hands.

If the other customers hadn't been curiously watching their exchange, she would have thought she was seeing a mature, grown up ghost.

The next one and a half hours were spent joyfully attacking the cake and talking about nothing.

He paid her with a fifty dollar note and a grimace to show that he didn’t have change. She didn’t seem to mind.

“You know, I remember a time, you used to pay me with coins you’d scrounged from who knows where. Where’d you get all this money?”

“From my pocket,” said Neal, the picture of innocence.

“And where did it get into your pocket from?” She crossed her arms sternly.

“Not telling!” Neal nearly collapsed in silent laughter.

Irene laughed heartily and picked up a paper parcel, already stained in telltale smears of butter.

“Irene, really, you shouldn’t-”

“If it makes you feel better, I’ll cut the cost from this handsome fifty dollar note, but Daniel Brooks, you are not leaving this bakery without a piece of that cake.” She glared at him again for good measure.

Neal raised his hands in surrender, took the change and the parcel, and left. He was tempted to run out, but the doorway was too low now to risk anything like that.

Irene watched him leave out of the corner of her eye and smiled.

He didn’t come in with dirt-caked hands cake and leave the area surrounding the washbasin dripping with water, nor did he stick his tongue through a gap in his teeth and try to make her laugh every seven seconds, but this was definitely Danny Brooks.

How she’d missed the life he brought to her bakery.

-:-

  
He walked the streets like someone who knew them, taking shortcuts through front lawns and back alleys.

He stopped in front of a burnt out house that no one had bothered to bring to the ground. His old home.

Ellen had told him about it long ago, about the fire that consumed the house and his mother all at once. He hadn’t grieved. There was nothing to grieve for. His mother had left him the same day as his father.

He hadn't asked for her to take care of him the way Ellen had. If she'd been there for him at least as much as Irene, if she'd even showed an ounce of responsibility, he would have come back as soon as he heard.

He looked at the charred walls and wondered if the fire had been fueled by alcohol, or if she’d set it herself, trapped in one of her delusions.

He shook his head, laid down the parcel of cake on the doorstep and turned his back on his childhood home. But not on St. Louis. He owed Irene at least that much.


End file.
